I<\/span>t freezes my heart this dark Chicago ravaged by the wind.\u00a0 It clogs my soul with gray dismay.\u00a0 I want to bang my head against the wall and die.\u00a0 I\u2019m beat and I can\u2019t sleep, so I eat pretzels and drink Old Overholt staring out the window into this polar Sunday night as clear as the loneliness that is choking me, right here, right now, on the twenty-second floor of dreadful 4700 South Lake Park Avenue, this brown thing that looks like the offspring of a hotel and a prison, waiting for the first tinge of light to crawl out of the lake, hoping to be zonked enough by then that I can lay down and close my eyes and quit seeing you.\u00a0 Wherever I look.<\/p>\n

This evening, before leaving for the gig, I googled your name.\u00a0 There\u2019s no trace of you out there.\u00a0 I searched for Leela Smith, Leela Brown, Leela Johnson, but the Leelas I found are too young or too old to be you.\u00a0 I wonder where you are.\u00a0 If you are alive.\u00a0 If you have a family.\u00a0 I wonder if there is a lucky someone with whom you make love the same way we did, to whom you give all there is to be had, willingly, because it pleases you.\u00a0 I hope you\u2019re happy.\u00a0 I hope your life turned out to be what you expected.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Mine turned out to be a desert dotted with oases of mediocrity.\u00a0 I write scores for TV ads.\u00a0 The last one is not bad actually\u2014lots of pathos\u2014a pirogue gliding on the flat surface of a pond early in the morning.\u00a0 And I still play.\u00a0 I\u2019m in The Chuck Liotta Quartet with Sheena Jackson right now, chasing a record deal.\u00a0 We have a two-month Sunday gig at the Green Dolphin and do one-night stands all over town.\u00a0 Are we any good?\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 Sheena is a pretentious old girl who thinks she can be as hot as Billie Holiday if she just drinks enough.\u00a0 Chuck\u2019s an alto player who sees himself as the heir to Ornette Coleman but has to tone it down otherwise he gets no work at all.\u00a0 The bass guy is an old journeyman like me.\u00a0 The drummer is dynamite though\u2014a kid from Memphis\u2014if this band has any luster whatsoever it comes from him.\u00a0 As far as my genius is concerned, it is apparent by now that it\u2019s limited.\u00a0 Blazing speed, that\u2019s all my guitar has to offer.\u00a0 That\u2019s the scoop.<\/p>\n

Vivid images.\u00a0 My first day on the job, sometime in October.\u00a0 A day of Santa Ana winds, vaguely surreal, when the smog is driven to the coast and the air inland is for once cool and clean, and the murky mood of Los Angeles is instantly transformed into one of unhinged exhilaration.\u00a0 A brand-new mini-mall on Santa Monica Boulevard, just east of Sepulveda, a white two-story building with a blue roof.\u00a0 The owner was an entrepreneur from the old country who had hired me essentially because I spoke Italian.\u00a0 He was giving me the grand tour, overwhelming me with all sorts of erratic information.\u00a0 As he was busy fishing some architectural plans out of the trunk of his car, the door of the hair salon swung open and you walked out, paralyzing me.\u00a0 An Amazon chewing gum.\u00a0 Six-foot one, a wide face with angular features, a bob of strawberry blond hair, massive breasts, the legs and arms of a serious athlete.\u00a0 Not an ounce of fat where it shouldn\u2019t be: the girlfriend of Hercules.\u00a0 You had a pale blue shift on and a pair of tennis shoes of all the colors of the rainbow.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think you were gorgeous in a classic way\u2014most men probably felt put off by your size\u2014but you sure knocked me out cold.\u00a0 You strolled along the mall\u2019s sidewalk with the casual grace of a big cat, then felt the heat of my gaze and turned, giving me a puzzled look and popping a big bubble.\u00a0 I sensed that such an intense appreciation of your presence was something you didn\u2019t experience too often.<\/p>\n

Trying to learn the job took most of my energy the first few days\u2014I had to keep my distance.\u00a0 But after a week or so, I walked into the mini-mart to get myself a coke and there you were, standing by the cooler choosing a juice.\u00a0 You were wearing washed-out jeans this time, with a white shirt knotted at the waist and another pair of wild tennis shoes.\u00a0 You turned when you heard me coming and smiled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello\u2026 I\u2019m Luke Torelli\u2026 the new manager.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I know.\u00a0 Leela Rowe.\u00a0 Pleased to meet you,\u201d you replied, and I discovered your southern accent.<\/p>\n

I groped for something else to say as we were shaking hands, totally mesmerized by the lovely green of your eyes and by your delicate perfume, then I just took a leap\u2014feeling like a trapeze artist trying a new stunt with no net.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re very beautiful, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

That caught you by surprise.\u00a0 \u201cWhy, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time\u2026 I\u2019ve seen you alone\u2026 and I wanted to\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are you, Quick Draw McGraw?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely not.\u00a0 I\u2019m being a little\u2026 abrupt, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a tad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI apologize.\u00a0 You\u2019re right\u2026 I don\u2019t even know if you\u2019re\u2026 married or\u2026 if you have a\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I\u2019m not.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t have one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u00a0 So you can go out with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUmm.\u00a0 Do I look like an easy girl to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no.\u00a0 Look\u2026 I\u2019d just love to sit down with you for an hour, that\u2019s all\u2026 a glass of wine, a plate of spaghetti\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

That got me a good laugh, and what a wonderful laugh it was\u2014deep, healthy, full of spirit.\u00a0 \u201cCan\u2019t quite tell if you\u2019re Clark Kent or the King of Lasso.\u00a0\u00a0 But how can a girl refuse a plate of spaghetti?\u201d\u00a0 Then you found a business card, asked me for a pen and scribbled down your home number.<\/p>\n

Raving years the early Eighties\u2014Los Angeles awash in cocaine, people acting big and talking bigger, everybody trying to live their life with oomph, chasing their ambitions with a vengeance, constantly on the hunt for a way to sneak into the inner sanctuary of the few chosen ones.\u00a0 Success.<\/p>\n

And image was as important as the size of your dream.\u00a0 My ride was a real head-turner, a \u201952 military Jeep painted ivory with a hand brush, topless, with fat tires and bucket seats.\u00a0 Top speed was 50 miles an hour, which inevitably infuriated the other drivers when I was crawling up Sepulveda to come to see you in Sherman Oaks.<\/p>\n

You lived somewhere off Ventura, in a small two-story building surrounding a lush courtyard with a tiny swimming pool in the middle.\u00a0 Your one-bedroom apartment was spotless, nicely furnished and very feminine\u2014lots of lace, lots of pink.<\/p>\n

You were as excited as I was when you opened the door, dressed to kill in a tight black dress and black shiny pumps that made you a good three inches taller than me.<\/p>\n

Spaghetti was ditched in favor of shrimp fajitas and we took the short drive to the restaurant in my Jeep, with you laughing like a little girl on a carnival ride.<\/p>\n

We hit it off magnificently.\u00a0 Sipping margaritas the size of bathtubs as an old maestro in a gray suit played the Cucaracha on the harp, I learned that you were from Texas, that you had been in L.A. three years, same as I, that you were a discus champion in high school with a throw of fifty-one meters and now lifted weights at the gym four times a week, that you weighed 177 pounds\u2014only five pounds less than I did\u2014and ate a lot of tuna and loved perfumes and owned eight pairs of size ten custom made Vans, that you were thirty years old, same as I, and that you left Corpus Christi because your veterinary boyfriend wanted to get married and have a truckload of babies while you were sick of being a dental hygienist and wanted to become a famous stylist to the stars instead.\u00a0 And you learned that I was a musician and my goal was to write movie scores, that my real name is Luca because my family immigrated to the States from Genoa when I was ten and that I grew up in Pittsburgh where my dad had a pizzeria and my mom taught piano, that I had gotten a medical discharge from the Navy in Nam in 1971 for having been caught smoking pot by an admiral on an unannounced inspection\u2014the one unlucky soul on a ship that sailed in a cloud of marijuana\u2014and upon coming back I had tried my luck as a light-heavy weight and ended up with three wins, three losses and two draws, the reason for my face being what it is, and that having children wasn\u2019t in my program either.<\/p>\n

Passion is the only thing that really counts.\u00a0 Without it life doesn\u2019t mean a thing, becomes mere survival.\u00a0 But you can\u2019t create it out of thin air.\u00a0 It must happen by itself, like spontaneous combustion. \u00a0Sheena, my singer, comes to mind.\u00a0 The queen of piloted love.\u00a0 Squeeze me here, talk dirty, kiss me there, tell me that you love me.\u00a0 I see her every now and then because sometimes you must touch somebody else\u2019s flesh, you must go out and have a cup of coffee with another soul, you must speak, articulate thoughts.\u00a0 Well, she doesn\u2019t make love to you.\u00a0 She makes love to herself through you.\u00a0 Nonetheless she\u2019s convinced she possesses the sensuality of a black panther.\u00a0 And she sings with the same distant mind-set she makes love with.\u00a0 She sings because it befits the exotic image she has of herself.\u00a0 I play to tell a story instead.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m not very good at it, but you can tell that behind my music there\u2019s some passion\u2014there\u2019s Little Luke trying to offer something to the world.\u00a0 I\u2019m being too harsh probably, but mankind, myself included, has not lived up to my expectations.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m getting sloshed on rye at this very moment and there\u2019s the pot in Nam, but I\u2019ve always been a two-beer kind of guy and so were you\u2014L.A.\u2019s drug frenzy didn\u2019t touch us.\u00a0 That\u2019s why after two margaritas we were quite drunk.\u00a0 We started going at each other on the stairs to your apartment, actually I went at you while you were fumbling for the keys, giggling.\u00a0 The fireworks began the moment we shut the door.\u00a0 I held you close for a long time against that door, kissing you and fondling you in the half-light\u2014discovering thighs and buttocks as hard as rosewood.\u00a0 Then you helped me take off your dress but let me fumble for a full minute with your bra, smiling mischievously, before telling me that it snapped on the front.\u00a0 Your breasts were glorious.\u00a0 Huge, firm, perfectly symmetrical, with tiny pink nipples.\u00a0 I must have had an ecstatic expression when I was finally able to free them because you burst out laughing.\u00a0 I gently eased you on the couch and knelt by your side burying my face into you, tasting your body, absorbing your fragrance.\u00a0 You had a shelf covered with perfumes in your bathroom, but the one you had on right then was called Green Briar and it remains with my senses\u2014incense, orange, pepper, wood sap\u2014it was a heavenly match to your skin.\u00a0 We made love forever, with great intensity, with me pulling back and stopping periodically to make it last as long as possible.<\/p>\n

Eventually, at first light, done in but not spent, we ended up on your bed.\u00a0 You were lying on your belly, up on your elbows, resting your chin on your hands, looking pensively outside the window with your thighs a bit spread apart.\u00a0 I was sitting next to you with my legs crossed, admiring your body and caressing your curves.\u00a0 Suddenly you turned, peeked down at where my longing was apparent and then looked up at me with a severe expression, but you couldn\u2019t hold it and broke up in one of your laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look like a mountain lion just about to pounce on the little lamb,\u201d you said.<\/p>\n

I raised my shoulders smiling.\u00a0 \u201cCan\u2019t change nature.\u00a0 Poor old lion\u2019s got to eat too.\u00a0 And that\u2019s a big lamb anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made you laugh again.\u00a0 Then you paused, looking straight in my eyes, probing, dead serious.\u00a0 Finally you came up on your knees with one effortless move and hugged me so hard it hurt.\u00a0 You reached between my legs and squeezed me, biting me gently on the lips and whispering something in my ear that only you and I will ever know.\u00a0 Then you turned and bent over, offering yourself.\u00a0 And that was beautiful.<\/p>\n

Those were busy days.\u00a0 You were always working long hours and I had my music.\u00a0 I was constantly composing and sending out demos.\u00a0 Friday nights I played with a keyboardist in a bar in San Pedro.\u00a0 Wednesdays I had a solo gig in a steakhouse in Malibu.\u00a0 I was also playing in a blues band but we weren\u2019t doing much.<\/p>\n

The weekend was ours.\u00a0 Saturday mornings you worked and I gave lessons, but at two in the afternoon the world would come to a halt and our own little planet would start rotating in its place.\u00a0 I always made a stop for submarines at the deli on 2^{nd<\/sup> Street, in Santa Monica\u2014yours was always a large chicken breast with roasted peppers, shredded lettuce and olive oil.\u00a0 We made love all afternoon, later went to listen to some band, or if I was playing somewhere you came along and when we got back to your place we ate vanilla ice cream and made love some more and I would sing arias from old operas to you, softly, mindful of the neighbors, as you listened enraptured, and then we made love again till the morning.<\/p>\n}

Sunday we got up late and while you stretched and messed about with a pair of 15-pound dumbbells I made coffee and waffles and sometimes you would trim my hair.\u00a0 In the afternoon you\u2019d ride your Bug behind my Jeep and we would move to my place, a large ground floor studio at the very end of Venice Boulevard.\u00a0 We would play paddle tennis or jog on the beach, occasionally we\u2019d go to the movies.\u00a0 You would always insist that I play a little while, just for you.\u00a0 Then I\u2019d make pizza from scratch or grill burgers on the hibachi and we would retire early for another night of ice cream and love.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember us having the slightest disagreement ever.<\/p>\n

Why did it end then?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 In the early spring I was fired.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t cut for that job.\u00a0 I started selling used cars, but it didn\u2019t last long because I got a gig in Vegas.\u00a0 I went for two months the first time.\u00a0 When I came back we took up where we left off.\u00a0 Shortly after though I signed a six-month contract and had to leave my apartment in Venice and get one there.\u00a0 It was serious money and I didn\u2019t have to do anything but play my music for it.\u00a0 In the mean time you took a chair in a salon in Beverly Hills.\u00a0 At some point you came to see me for a week and I came back to see you a couple of times.\u00a0 But we couldn\u2019t hold it together.\u00a0 I signed another contract.\u00a0 You started to see somebody\u2014I started to see somebody.\u00a0 Then one day your phone was disconnected.\u00a0 Two years later I came back to L.A. and wasn\u2019t able to find you.\u00a0 Vanished.\u00a0 Turn the page.<\/p>\n

The way I see it, life flows down the river and you chase it and that\u2019s about all you can do.\u00a0 Of course there are choices to be made.\u00a0 But are you really responsible for the choices you make?\u00a0 Aren\u2019t we all led by what\u2019s inside us, and isn\u2019t what\u2019s inside us also the product of all that\u2019s happened to us from the instant we came to this world?\u00a0 So, is it my fault if I am who I am?\u00a0 If I desire what I desire?\u00a0 If I\u2019ve never met another woman, among the multitude of women I have met, whose love could trigger mine?\u00a0 And who cares whose fault it is anyway?\u00a0 At some point somewhere I made a wrong choice, that\u2019s the merciless truth, and the thought of what could have been torments me. \u00a0Devours my guts.\u00a0 Rips my soul apart.\u00a0 But you can\u2019t dwell in those thoughts, you just can\u2019t, I know it, you must keep them way deep inside your head, compressed as a whisper, even if they want to grow and become a scream, because who knows how destiny works, and if you start thinking in terms of what is and what could have been that scream will become louder and louder and louder, till you lose what little hold you have on the tiny air bubble that keeps you all together.\u00a0 And the whole castle of cards comes crashing down.<\/p>\n

The bottle\u2019s half empty, the pretzels are gone and my head buzzes like the blackest of bumblebees.\u00a0 Below me a ghostly train is noiselessly zipping along a wind-whipped Burnham Park, the frigid lake behind still dark and inert.<\/p>\n

I have no idea where this shred of hope that\u2019s wrapped around my heart like a minuscule octopus comes from\u2014simple desire to go on living I guess.\u00a0 Or the one in a trillion possibility that one day I turn a corner and there you are, changed only by time.\u00a0 But I welcome it gratefully.\u00a0 And I offer it to you, who once graced my existence with your unlimited love.<\/p>\n

Lying languidly on that bed, staring thoughtfully out the window, your body still moist from love, the night turning pink, the city all around slowly uncoiling into its diurnal shape, you were absolutely splendid, Leela.\u00a0 You were the one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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